Say When

Yesterday, on the North Shore of Oahu at Dillingham Airfield, KITV News Reporter Andrew Pereira and I participated in setting two Hawaii State skydiving records at Skydive Hawaii.

Andrew and I get ready for the jump of our lives

The first record was for the “highest altitude tandem “HALO” jump” leaping from the plane at over 4 miles in space at 22,000 feet. HALO stands for “High Altitude Low Opening” and one of the more famous HALO jumps took place recently when RedBull Skydiver Felix Baumgartner jumped from 24 miles from space or approximately 128,000 in altitude.

Some folks may remember the first time I set the Hawaii Tandem Halo Jump when I jumped from 21,000 feet back on December 11th of 2011, as Frank T.K. Hinshaw stated the first time I jumped… every extra 1,000 feet in altitude makes the risks and the danger just that much more.

The second record set yesterday was for the “altitude and wingsuit flight time record for Hawaii of 22,000ft & 4 minutes 37 seconds in flight time,” set by Hinshaw himself.

Frank T.K. Hinshaw on the far right in his wing suit

Here is a short video of me interviewing Andrew Pereira shortly before we went up and as you can tell… he was pretty nervous about what he was about to do as this was his first time skydiving, less yet doing a HALO jump.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/WFlgZF_QVWk]

After we were instructed on what we were to do and equipped with oxygen tanks, we traversed out to the airplane where we would have no chance of turning back once we got on that plane.

When we were close to 22,000 feet in altitude, “Nacho” Martinez posted the following picture to Facebook and said “Took off on load one and saw a huge school of dolphins. Then went up on the next load and saw 6 whales. Now breathing pure oxygen while climbing to 22,000 ft. How could you not love Skydive Hawaii!?”

At 12,000 feet we donned oxygen masks as the air gets thinner the higher you go.

Here is a quick clip of the freefall part of my jump from 22,000 feet:

[youtube=http://youtu.be/swv5Zym804A]

I free falled for about a minute until my tandem instructor Martinez pulled the chute at about 5,000 feet from the ground and then glided smoothly in for a stand-up landing. I even got to steer the parachute myself for about 30 seconds and that was super cool!

I spy VH07V

Once again I can say it was cold… but it wasn’t near as cold as the first time I did the HALO. Ever since I did the first HALO jump, they have offered this experience to the public as well… of course it costs a lot more then the regularly advertised jumps and I suggest you contact Skydive Hawaii directly at (808) 637-9700 or (808) 945-0222 if you or a group of folks are interested in doing this.

My view from 22,000 feet as we were about to jump from the plane

Here is the video of the second record that was broken… as T.K. said though “Set a new altitude and wingsuit flight time record for Hawaii today: 22,000ft & 4 minutes 37 seconds. . . not bad for not knowing I was going to go for the attempt until this morning. If I had inflight oxygen & gloves, I think I could get 6 minutes easy.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4NbkQod_bU]

I’d like to say thanks to Skydive Hawaii for giving Andrew and I this opportunity and to T.K.’s father Frank (Sr.) and the Hinshaw family for running such a great operation out on the North Shore. They bring in a lot of tax dollars from the tourism industry and you know how much our islands depend on tourists having a good time and wanting to come back to Hawaii.